After last week’s post about the website with the large volume of ads that would have normally been eliminated by my ad-blockers, I got some inquiries asking what software I use to avoid seeing any website advertisements.

For me, there are 3 basic reasons to use an ad-blocker:

To handle all of these issues, I use a popular ad-blocker called uBlock Origin. It’s free. I use it in conjunction with both Firefox and Chrome, since those are the two browsers I use most often (mostly Chrome). uBlock Origin works as a browser extension.

When I set up a new PC, part of the configuration is to include uBlock Origin in those two browsers. When it’s running in Chrome or Firefox, you’ll see this little icon up in the toolbar:

To get it for Firefox, open Firefox and go to:

Then click on “Add to Firefox” then click on “Install”. You’ll get the notification that it has been added to Firefox.

To get it for Chrome, open Chrome and go to:

Then click on “Add to Chrome” and confirm that you want to add it as an extension. You’ll get a notification that it has been added to Chrome.

If you use the Microsoft Edge browser you can also get the uBlock Origin app from the Microsoft Store. I don’t like Edge at all and therefore don’t use it, so I can’t really comment first hand on how well uBlock Origin works with it.

To show you the difference this little extension makes, here’s a website that I use frequently to get a piece of software that checks hard drive health. This first image is with NO ad-blocker. Those 3 display ads take up much of the screen, not to mention they have the fake “Download” button to mislead you into clicking on the ad:

And here’s the same website with uBlock Origin running and blocking the ads:

Really makes the website more user-friendly and easier to look at without all the junk ads cluttering up the page, don’t you think?

Originally, I was using an ad-blocker called AdBlock Plus. It works okay, but the default settings don’t block ALL the ads on each website. AdBlock Plus is configured initially to allow ads to be displayed if they aren’t seen as “annoying”. So if you want to actually block all the ads, you have to go in and change the settings to tell it to do that. Since I set up ad-blocking on multiple computers each day, I got tired of doing that. uBlock Origin works great right out of the box.

No ad-blocker is 100% effective so even with uBlock Origin running you might see the occasional ad. But if you really want to see the difference, use it for a while and then go use a friend’s computer to view a few websites like MSN or Yahoo. You’ll wonder how you ever put up with that garbage for so long!